6 Takeaways From Emails Revealing White House Role in Targeting Parents Who Disagree With School Boards

The president of the National School Boards Association says that a White House meeting prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to direct the FBI to investigate parents who disagree with their local school boards over issues such as critical race theory, gender identity, and mask mandates.

Members of the NSBA board speculated among themselves that the group’s executive director and CEO, Chip Slaven, was using the national association’s letter to President Joe Biden requesting such action to jockey for a spot in the Biden administration. This information and more is contained in a recently released batch of emails and memos, which also note tension among the national association’s board members about the wisdom of pushing federal intervention in local school matters.

Parents Defending Education, an advocacy group, obtained the information about the White House involvement and other details through public records requests and made it available Thursday and Friday.

The National School Boards Association did not respond to phone and email inquiries from The Daily Signal about the revelations. Here are six big takeaways from the information about the national association, Garland, and the Biden White House that has come to light.

1. White House Meeting

NSBA President Viola Garcia sent an Oct. 12 memo to officials of state school boards associations that refers to a Sept. 14 meeting with White House staff.

“Subsequently, on Sept. 17, 2021, the interim executive director emailed notice to the state association executive directors that indicated a letter requesting federal assistance would be sent,” Garcia’s memo said.

Less than two weeks later, the NSBA’s Sept. 29 letter to Biden was publicized in The Washington Post and elsewhere. The letter called on the U.S. government to apply the post-9/11 Patriot Act, among other laws, to some parents deemed to be an “immediate threat” to education officials.

The following Monday, Oct. 4, Garland issued a memo directing the Justice Department and the FBI to “address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”

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